AN ATLAS OF IMPOSSIBLE LONGING, by Anuradha Roy (Free Press; paperback, $14). A single act of pity rattles down generations to break a caste’s rules, test a family’s mettle and throw together two unlikely friends. — Marie Arana

DOC, by Mary Doria Russell (Random House, $26). The Wild West rides back to life in this aggressively researched and wonderfully entertaining story about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp in the days before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

— Ron Charles

AN EVIL EYE, by Jason Goodwin (Farrar Straus Giroux, $26). The discovery of a Russian corpse in a Christian well in the heart of a Muslim land clarifies the muddle of the decaying Ottoman Empire.

— Steve Donoghue

FIELD GRAY, by Philip Kerr (Putnam, $26.95). The author propels Bernie Gunther all across Europe to give us a panoramic look at life before, during and after history’s most terrible war.

— Patrick Anderson

GONE, by Mo Hayder (Atlantic Monthly, $24). The little girls who vanish throughout this tale turn out to be beribboned and pink-sneakered red herrings in a much more sinister game of retribution. — Maureen Corrigan

THE PARIS WIFE, by Paula McLain (Ballantine, $25). An imaginative homage to Hadley Richardson Hemingway, who helped her young husband, Ernest, become a writer. — Donna Rifkind

THE POISON TREE, by Erin Kelly (Viking, $26.95). A compelling creeper about a forlorn woman’s friendship with two bohemian British siblings. — M.C.

THE PREACHER, by Camilla Lackberg (Pegasus, $25.95). Those seeking a successor to the late Stieg Larsson as the doyen of Scandinavian crime fiction should look to the Swedish author of this gripping thriller. — Dennis Drabelle

THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT, by Louis Bayard (Henry Holt, $25). The search for an ancient letter in a Washington apartment escalates into a trans-Atlantic scramble to uncover much more.

— Kathy Blumenstock

SILVER SPARROW, by Tayari Jones (Algonquin, $19.95). A man has two families in the same town. One knows about the other; the other doesn’t. — Anita Shreve

STATE OF WONDER, by Ann Patchett (Harper, $26.99). Set amid the Amazon’s piranha-infested waters, this is surely the smartest, most exciting novel of the summer. — R.C.

THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR, by Arthur Phillips (Random House, $26). An elaborately structured comic novel in the form of a memoir about a Shakespeare-obsessed, dysfunctional family. — M.D.

WEST OF HERE, by Jonathan Evison (Algonquin, $24.95). A voracious story packed with daring folks who dream of carving lives onto the last frontier: the uncharted interior of the Olympic Peninsula in 1889. — R.C.

READING MY FATHER, by Alexandra Styron (Scribner, $25). An attempt by the daughter of William Styron to make sense of the discrepancy between her father’s deeply moral novels and his egregious behavior. — Heller McAlpin

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